Social Media

TweetDeck Has a Fierce Rival in Seesmic Desktop

Aside from the Twitter.com website, the desktop app TweetDeck is the undisputed king of Twitter apps, with 14.51% of users posting this way according to TwitStat. That compares to 24.54% on Twitter itself.

The only posting method to come even close to TweetDeck's lead among third-party clients is the iPhone app (and now Mac desktop app) Tweetie, which 8.80% of Twitter users utilize. And yet, on features at least, TweetDeck now has a rival on its tail: Seesmic Desktop, which only 2.16% of users choose to post with, is iterating faster and may have taken the lead on some key features.

Seesmic Appears to Emulate TweetDeck

Seesmic Desktop, which owes its pedigree to the single-column desktop Twitter app Twhirl, was clearly an attempt to emulate TweetDeck: the layout is virtually the same, with multiple columns of updates as the defining feature. Seesmic Desktop was seen as a follower, but not a leader. And yet it did boast an incredibly useful feature that TweetDeck still lacks: support for posting to multiple Twitter accounts. TweetDeck has another limitation, too: it limits you to 10 columns of updates, while Seesmic has no such limit.

The Seesmic Desktop launch may have kept TweetDeck on its toes: the timing was perhaps coincidental, but the day after Seesmic Desktop's release, TweetDeck patched a memory leak which was slowing down computers and could have encouraged users to look for alternatives.

Imitator Becomes an Innovator?

Today's update to Seesmic Desktop puts it a step ahead on some Facebook-related features: while TweetDeck lets you view updates from Facebook friends and post status updates to the site, Seesmic has added the ability to view Facebook comments, "like" updates, view Facebook photos and more.

For many, this won't be a compelling reason to switch to a newcomer, but it may mark Seesmic Desktop's transition from TweetDeck imitator to social media innovator.

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